Hurricane Igor Lashes Bermuda

Hurricane Igor lashed Bermuda with winds gusting up to 93 miles an hour, cutting power to two- thirds of the Atlantic island colony and forcing authorities to close the main causeway to the airport.

Igor passed within 40 miles (64 kilometers) of Bermuda and was 135 miles north of the British territory with 75 mph winds just before 6 a.m. local time, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in a website advisory. The Bermuda Weather service reported sustained winds of 81 mph and more powerful gusts had battered Bermuda.

"Tropical storm conditions are still occurring in Bermuda," the Hurricane Center said. "Igor will continue moving away from Bermuda and pass offshore of the southeastern tip of Newfoundland on Tuesday."

The storm cut power to 23,600 clients, the Bermuda Electric Light Co. said in a website statement. Bermuda's sole supplier of electricity says it has 35,558 metered connections on the island, which has about 68,000 residents. The Bermuda Emergency Measures Organization said on its website that the causeway to the airport was closed until further notice.

The Canadian Hurricane Center issued a tropical storm watch for Newfoundland from Stones Cove to Jones Harbour, while in Bermuda the authorities replaced its hurricane warning with a tropical storm warning as Igor moved away, the U.S. center said.

The storm remains "large" with hurricane-force winds of at least 74 mph stretching 90 miles from its center and tropical storm force winds of at least 39 mph extending out about 345 miles, the Miami-based U.S. center said. Igor is a Category 1 storm, the lowest on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale.

East of Igor, Tropical Storm Julia is 1,165 miles west of the Azores moving east-northeast at 9 mph with 45 mph winds, the center also said. The system, formerly a hurricane, is forecast to dissipate within a day without threatening land.

A low-pressure system 400 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands has an 80 percent chance of becoming a tropical cyclone during the next two days, the center said. A cyclone is a rotating storm ranging from a depression to a hurricane.

Five hurricanes with Category 3 winds of 111 miles per hour (178 kilometers per hour) have formed in the Atlantic this year of a total of 11 named storms with winds of 39 mph or more. The average Atlantic season produces 11 named storms from June through November, two of them major hurricanes, the center said.